{
 "id": "walt-whitman/a-woman-waits-for-me",
 "title": "A Woman Waits for Me",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 30,
 "container": "Children of Adam",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1856,
  "venue": "Leaves of Grass (Brooklyn, 1856)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the Whitman Archive transcription of the 1856 Fowler & Wells edition (ppp.00237). The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://whitmanarchive.org/item/ppp.00237"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "children-of-adam.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 39,
  "n_stanzas": 8,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 119,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Sex contains all, bodies, souls,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All the governments, judges, gods, follow’d persons of the earth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These are contain’d in sex as parts of itself and justifications of itself.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those women that are warm-blooded and sufficient for me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see that they understand me and do not deny me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see that they are worthy of me, I will be the robust husband of those women.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "They are not one jot less than I am,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They are tann’d in the face by shining suns and blowing winds,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike, retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They are ultimate in their own right⁠—they are calm, clear, well-possess’d of themselves.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I draw you close to me, you women,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I cannot let you go, I would do you good,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for others’ sakes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Envelop’d in you sleep greater heroes and bards,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It is I, you women, I make my way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable, but I love you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for these States, I press with slow rude muscle,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I brace myself effectually, I listen to no entreaties,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated within me.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In you I wrap a thousand onward years,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls, new artists, musicians, and singers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you interpenetrate now,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death, immortality, I plant so lovingly now.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}